Thurs 17th - Thurs 24th July (Week 43-44)

Thurs 17th - Hideously early start of 3:30am to catch the 4:15 bus to KLIA 2 airport for our 7am flight (No. 42). Arrived into Tawau (Sabah) at 10am and got our 1hr transfer to Semporna. Checked in with Scuba Junkie, paid our £580pp for the 5 night package (room, 13 dives, food, Advanced course etc), then wandered around Semporna for a couple of hours. Not much to do, just a local food market and most places were shut due to Ramadan. Got the speed boat transfer over to Mabul Island, arriving at 3:45pm. Checked into our lovely Deluxe a/c room, with a hammock and chairs on the balcony. Had a wander around the area, and it still seems a very "locals" island, lots of village life and little naked children running around, and not that many tourists. Seems quite surreal to see these lovely beach and water bungalows for the tourists, and literally right next door is the local village with their basic wooden huts, rubbish all over the beach, and some even live on little boats with all their washing hung up on a line on the roof.

We were a little worried about coming after the recent shooting incident on the 12th - "gunmen killed a member of the police and kidnapped another at the Mabul Water Bungalows Resort on the island of Mabul, off Semporna." We only heard about it in local news - didn't seem to hit more international news like the BBC, but the Foreign Office advice is currently "advise against all but essential travel to all islands off the coast of eastern Sabah from Kudat to Tawau, including Mabul, Sipadan", with a "general threat from terrorism", and also to "take great care along the coastal area south to Tawau and around Semporna". Perfect - exactly where we are.
We obviously emailed the dive company to confirm the situation and ensure it was safe to come, and they assured us it was, so fingers crossed nothing else happens in the next week.

Fri 18th - My birthday !!! First full day in the resort, and did 3 fun dives. We were quite disappointed with the vis. only being around 5-10m max with a lot of sediment floating around. Saw a few turtles, and quite a few other fish, but had to get really close to spot anything ! Second dive was off the House reef of Mabul Water Bungalows - where the shooting happened 6 days ago ! Lovely looking resort and the only sign that something had happened was the marine police boat outside. Final dive was back around the other side of the island again, and saw more turtles again. Had a nice buffet dinner chatting to other divers, then spent the evening reading the 3 chapters ready for our course tomorrow.

Sat 19th - Started our Advanced Open Water course today, beginning with Peak Performance buoyancy. Despite having 60+ dives now, this was still really useful and we noticed a difference immediately. Next up was Navigation, where we had to use a compass to navigate a square, swim along various headings, and find our way back to a certain spot. Final dive of the day was a Drift Dive. Most of our dives tend to be drift dives as they are an awful lot easier and most places tend to have some current. Just drifted gently along a reef wall, and lost count of the number of turtles we saw. Some were just unbelievable huge - must have been around 6ft - they seemed like small planes ! So thats 3 of our 5 dives done, final 2 tomorrow. Spent the evening reading up on tomorrows diving and filling in the review sections - fun - homework !

Sun 20th - Final day of Advanced course. First dive was the Deep Dive - the main reason we needed to do the Advanced course as our current 21m certification can be quite limiting. Did a timed mental test at the surface, and again at 30m to see how our reactions were affected. Mine were exactly the same, and Brandon was only 15sec slower. 2nd dive was just a normal fun dive, and our final dive of the day was a Wreck dive. Swam around a newly sunken police boat, through the top section, and into and out of the wheelhouse etc. Pretty cool, but not in the same league as the Liberty wreck we did in Bali. So - thats it - we are now Advanced divers - whoo.

Mon 21st - SIPADAN DAY ! Its funny that when you speak to divers around the world, most will recommend Sipadan. But its quite difficult to actually dive there. There are a very limited number of daily permits, and the only way to dive there with Scuba Junkie is to do a 5 night/4 day package, with only one of those days being at Sipadan. Sipadan is world-famous as it's unique for being an old volcano that comes up from depths, and has stunning turquoise water around the island, which suddenly drops to dark blue as the sides of the volcano drop off down to 600m !
Early start of 5:45am to be on the boat at 6:30. The boat ride over was extremely choppy with massive waves that we rode up and crashed back down again. Our first dive was pretty impressive as we dropped straight into a huge school of jack fish with quite a few white-tipped reef shark all around. The vis was still poor all day - 10-15m max and despite all that plankton, we still didn't see anything big ! 2nd dive was along a deep wall with incredible coral structures, not fantastic colours, but just huge and well formed. 3rd dive was pretty similar, and in-between all the dives we stayed on the island enjoying paradise - small little jungle-clad island in the middle of nowhere, with stunning white sands and turquoise/dark blue waters all around. 4th and final dive of the day was pretty special and a great way to end our trip. We descended to 20m and went slightly inside an old lava tube cave which apparently is part of a series of caves which run right under the island and have trapped many turtles who have never found their way out. When you swim into the pitch black, its pretty eerie, but then you turn around and see the silhouette of the cave entrance with the deep blue waters beyond. We also found a huge tornado shaped school of barracuda which we hovered in the blue watching for a while. Quite disorientating being in water 600m deep - once you swim away from the wall, you have no reference at all and can quickly change depths without realising. We were back home at 4:15pm, and were pretty tired from 4 days of diving 3-4 times a day ! Finished the day with a lovely evening in the bar with our new diving friends - from the US, Australia, UK and Netherlands.

Tues 22nd - Long day of travel back to KL again. Got the boat transfer back to Semporna at 10:30am, taxi to Tawau airport at 12:30, and 14th AirAsia flight (flight no.43) back to KL at 3:30pm. 3hr flight, then the usual 1hr bus into KL, finally arriving at our hotel at 8:30pm.

Wed 23rd - Spent the morning sorting bits & pieces out after a week with no internet, then headed out at 4pm. Did a bit of shopping around Bukit Bintang, then went to Traders for 7pm. We'd booked a table with a view of the Twin Towers a few weeks ago, and we were very pleasantly surprised to learn it was "Wednesdays Ladies Night" - free cocktails from 6-9pm for all ladies ! To quote a new phrase we have recently learnt - "F**k, S**t, Hell Yeah" !! I merrily worked my way through - well, I lost count of the free margaritas I had - and Brandon had 2 beers, and a cheeky coke (with smuggled in JD!). Staggered our way out at 8:50pm to watch the 9pm Sound & Light show - although might have missed most of it ! Perfect end to a perfect trip before we fly home tomorrow. How to top this ???